Today’s article comes from Kate Feinberg, a Nashville food blogger, Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, and Yoga and Meditation Teacher. She leads mindful eating workshops to help others gather intentionally around the table.
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We’ve all done it. Breakfast in the car, lunch at our desks, and nutrition consumed with efficiency in mind — bars, pills, powders, and shakes. We’re all busy, and we do what we must, but if you’ve been yearning for more simplicity and connection within your daily life, the concept of mindful eating is a great place to start.
Mindful eating is a practice centered around preparing and savoring food, and it’s a surprisingly simple experience that everyone can enjoy. Not only does it transform how you interact with food, but it can also improve your self-awareness and self-compassion, while deepening your relationship with others. Yes, food can do that!
I enlisted the help of mindfulness practitioner and chef Joey Hulin to break down the what, why, and how of mindfulness eating. In her book, Mind and Bowl: A Guide to Mindful Eating & Cooking, she shares that “there is no ‘one way,’ no ‘right way,’ or quick fix. What is right for me may not be right for you.”
Today, I invite you to be curious as you explore what mindful eating might look like for you — and to be open to how it may profoundly impact your relationship with food, self, and others. Let’s start with the basics.
What is mindfulness?
To understand mindful eating, it helps to brush up on your understanding of mindfulness in general.
In her book, Joey Hulin explains how many of us practice mindfulness without realizing it. “I often hear people say they can’t practice meditation or mindfulness because their mind is too busy. What they might not realize is that by claiming: ‘I have a busy mind,’ they are, in some way, already practicing mindfulness!”
Self-awareness is the beginning of a mindfulness practice. In my meditation classes, I always ask students to close their eyes and observe their breath, whether short and in the chest or full and in the belly — if it feels uneven or smooth. I’ll ask students to scan their bodies and notice any areas of tension or discomfort or even places of lightness. Simply checking in with each of your senses can be a mindfulness practice. What can you see, smell, hear, or feel? Mindful eating touches on the fifth sense — what do you taste?
The examples above are quick and simple ways to incorporate mindfulness throughout your day, and they don’t require you to change into yoga pants, purchase a yoga mat, or book a class. You can practice mindfulness anywhere at any time. So why not start by practicing with something you do three times daily? Eating.
What is mindful eating?
“Mindful eating doesn’t just relate to the mindful consumption of food — how you prepare it and how it tastes. It goes much deeper than that. It involves noticing your emotional state when you reach for and consume food. It is to listen to your body and take stock of how you feel during and after eating,” says Joey.
It also involves taking stock of where your food came from and how it came to be here.
Joey also explains, “Mindful eating doesn’t require you to learn anything new or to become a nutrition expert. It doesn’t restrict, condemn, or vilify any food you or others choose, nor is it a reason to preach, advise, or prescribe what you should or shouldn’t be eating.”
It is an opportunity to be curious, aware, and joyful as you celebrate the experience of eating.
“Food is a pleasure and a sensual experience,” says Joey. Paying attention to all of the senses before and during a meal can heighten this experience.
The Benefits of Mindful Eating
Practicing mindful eating will not only improve your awareness of food and yourself, but it can also help you enjoy your meals even more!
As you slow down and pay attention through the practice of mindful eating, you become less likely to reach for food without thinking. Instead of emotionally consuming, you are more likely to pause and ask yourself, Why am I reaching for this?
Eating mindfully allows you to pay attention to the signals of when you are hungry, what you are hungry for, and when you are full.
Perhaps most importantly, when you eat mindfully, you slow down enough to bring your body out of a stressful state. Consuming without stress improves your digestion while helping your body absorb the nutrients from the food you intentionally choose.
How to Master Mindful Eating
In my experience of teaching mindful eating workshops, I break the process into four simple steps. I’m breaking down the steps here, with some input from Joey.
1. Food Chosen Mindfully
Joey talks about the ‘vibration’ of food in her book. High-vibrational food is food that is local, organic, and in season. This means that the highest vibrational food is what you grow in your very own garden. If you’ve ever gone through the challenge of growing your very first tomato, you know how much sweeter and juicier it tastes when you’ve poured your sweat and passion into producing it!
Buying from your local farmer, shopping at a farmers market, and using a CSA box are all great ways of choosing food mindfully, but you can also practice mindful eating at the grocery store. Think of grocery shopping as a sensual experience. Feel the food you pick up, examine the colors and textures, and allow yourself to pay attention to what foods bring you joy. This may be very different from the rushed errand that grocery shopping often is.
2. Food Prepared with Love
That state you are in can make a difference in the prepared food. Have you ever shared a meal with friends or family and felt the loving energy in the food itself? Practice cooking with an intention in mind. Focus on what you are doing and enjoy the process. And if you have the time, have fun, play, and get creative with the presentation and garnishes!
One way to practice preparing food with love is to make a meal for a friend or neighbor who is going through a difficult time. Join a meal train for a young family with a newborn. Invite friends over for dinner.
Now, you may think you don’t have time to cook. But nowadays, it is so easy to find 20-minute weeknight meals! If you have time to watch TV or scroll on social media, you can carve out 20 minutes to make a homemade meal.
3. Food Eaten Slowly
When we eat quickly or in front of a screen, we have no time or awareness to appreciate the food. Eating slowly can allow us to savor all of the flavors. In Okinawa, Japan, there is a common phrase, “Hara Hachi Bu,” which is a Confucian adage said before each meal. It means to stop when 80% full. It is a mindful reminder to pay attention while eating.
4. Food Shared with Others
While eating with others regularly is not always possible, bringing loved ones or new friends around the table is one of the best ways to bring sacredness to a meal.
“The rich sense of sharing a meal has become somewhat lost in modern Westernized culture. Creating this sacred pause to eat and socialize is being deprioritized in just about all areas of our lives: families are less likely to eat together now than ever before; office culture promotes multitasking and eating in front of a computer without a mental, visual, or physical break; and dinner times are more likely to be taken in front of a laptop or television than at a table,” Joey shares in her book.
A Mindful Eating Practice
You may be wondering how to put this all into action. Here is a mindful eating meditation that I teach in my workshops. All you need to get started is a snack — perhaps a piece of fruit or chocolate. You can also do this with the first bite of a meal. If it helps, you can record your voice reading through the prompts, then play it back with your eyes closed.
- Close your eyes and observe what thoughts, emotions, or sensations arise as you think about your food, both positive and negative.
- Now, tune into the sensation of feeling hungry. What is your body hungry for? Pay attention to the signals that give you this information.
- Open your eyes and bring your awareness to the food before you. Observe the color, shape, texture, and size. What else do you notice?
- Imagine what it took for this food to be in front of you — the sunshine, water, time, processing, transportation. Give gratitude to the earth for providing this, to everyone involved in the cultivation and preparation of this food, and to yourself for savoring this food.
- Bring the food to your nose and smell. Notice if the scent brings up any memories or sensations.
- Place the food in your mouth without chewing or swallowing. Close your eyes.
- Move it to different parts of your mouth and notice the flavors and textures.
- As you begin chewing, notice the parts of your mouth involved in chewing.
- When you swallow, notice the path the food follows from your mouth into your stomach.
- Observe the sensation that lingers in your mouth.
- Bring your awareness to your body. What are you experiencing at this moment?
- Imagine if you were to take another bite of food and eat it however you wished.
- Think about how this experience might be different if you were to eat more quickly and less mindfully.
- How would your life change if you incorporated this practice into every meal of every day?
A Mindful Eating Challenge
At the end of every mindful eating workshop, I like to leave my students with a challenge. Go to your local farmers’ market or grocery store and pick out something you’ve never cooked with before. Find a fun recipe for this new ingredient, and prepare a meal for someone else. Enjoy the meal together.
When you “savor every glorious bite of food,” as Joey Hulin puts it, you can savor every moment of life, too.
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